


Mercy

by JustJasper



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Caretaking, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Gen, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Prostitution, Lyrium Addiction, Lyrium Madness, Lyrium Withdrawal, Mercy Killing, Post-Trespasser
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-13 18:32:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5712754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustJasper/pseuds/JustJasper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was no sign of him until a year later, when Scout Harding heard rumors of a Fereldan man begging for lyrium in the streets of Val Chevin. According to Harding, the man she found was in the final stages of lyrium madness. He barely remembered himself, let alone her. It is unclear whether Harding gave the man a few coins, or a gentle knife to end his misery. What is clear is that Commander Cullen was gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mercy

 It's his voice Harding recognises, even though it's broken and hoarse, and almost lost in the bustle of the Val Chevin streets. With his rags and his dirty hair and beard, his sunken eyes and sallow skin, he's unrecognisable as the man he once was, but that voice she knows too well. Took orders from that voice, had drinks with that voice.

"Coin, ser?" he says, reaching out to a passer-by who pays him no mind. "Spare some coin, ser?"

Her heart aches in her chest. When Lace'd heard the rumours, she had hoped, prayed they'd been wrong. She'd hoped nobody would ever hear from him again. It seemed the best for all, for nobody to ever know what really became of him, to let them have their fancy about him running away to some place where he could live out his days, like he was some dying pet and the children's feelings were to be spared. To spare everyone _this_.

"Coin, ser?" Cullen turns his empty eyes on her.

"Cullen," she says, and there's no recognition in him, not of her, not of his name.

"Spare some coin, please ser?"

She's had reports of the city guard coming down hard on the vagrants in recent months, and she knows it's conspicuous to be stood with him, giving him more than passing attention. But he is owed that, at least.

"What about a bed for the night?" she says.

"Bed?" he rasps. "Coin then, if you want to touch me, before, so you don't cheat me."

Harding keeps the roiling disgust within her from her face. What he must have done, how far he must have gone, for his fix of lyrium.

"No, my friend, just a bed. I don't want your body."

He doesn't even hesitate in his desperation. "Alright. Bed. And some food? If you would ser, if you're willing."

"Yes, food too."

Empty lyrium vials clack in the pockets of his rags as they walk, and his breath labours. Half way to her lodgings, Cullen bends double and coughs up blood.

She knows then that this is mercy, and not salvation.

She gives him lyrium. Not dirty, polluted street-sold lyrium, but the pure refined kind, the sort he spent so long taking, so long relying on. In increments his shaking stops, his body calms, his twitching stills.

He eats like a starving dog, shits like his body is barely functioning, and she has to wash him like a babe, lifting his arms to scrub away the dirt. Cullen doesn't protest any of it, even in its indignity. He babbles, mostly, and she recognises some of it.

"Cassandra, please, I know what I'm doing. When the first wave moves in, we'll be prepared."

Lace cuts his nails and then his hair, his beard, crops it close and then shaves his haggard face smooth.

“You still leave yourself open on your blind side, you know. Have you earned some reprieve from his cheating by bedding him? Though Dorian seems to think that chess is only fun if you cheat.”

“Well, it makes things exciting,” she says, because responding feels better than letting him talk aimlessly to himself. Cullen brightens, actually smiles at her as she towels dry his now short hair.

“Harding,” he says, “do you have those reports yet?”

“Yes,” she says, and his eyes are bright with recognition. “I've got them here, would you like to read them?”

It lasts all of an hour, his clarity. He sits at the desk in her room and looks through papers, discusses them with her. Troop movements, requisitions, gossip. Lace is sure a lot of it is rehashed from conversations they've had before, but it's better than the dead eyes she saw on the street.

When he tires, she gives him another dose of lyrium and puts him to bed.

 _Dear Inquisitor_ , she writes, and sits for long minutes before she screws the paper into a ball. No. When she tells the Inquisitor, it won't be in a letter. When she tells Leliana and Cassandra, it will be face to face.

The Chargers were in Val Chevin only the week before, and she considers writing to the Iron Bull. He's a friend, a comrade, and she'd trust his advice. But she also knows exactly what it would be: _“quick and painless, Harding.”_ Krem, then; _“put the poor bastard out of his misery.”_ She can't imagine a single contact, a single friend of hers or the Commander would offer a different opinion.

Night falls and passes, and in the morning Cullen wakes coughing up more blood, hungry and shaking with the quick onset of withdrawal.

“The Knight Commander used to punish us by cutting our lyrium ration,” he says, as his shaking hand takes the vial Harding offers to him instead of the plate of food. “It's a short leash. I knew after Kirkwall, I'd have to stop. I did stop. For a time...”

Lace knows what a dying man looks like, has seen men fall from illness and injury. The inevitability of it sits heavy in her gut as she has nonsensical conversations with him into the morning and through the afternoon.

“I would like,” Cullen says, freshly dosed with lyrium and watching the window, as the evening begins to fall in pink and orange over the city, “I would like for an end to this. It's in my bones now, singing to me. I'd like not to hear the song any more. Lace Harding.”

It's not true cognizance, perhaps it never will be again, but it's enough. He knows her, and knows himself, and if she can make that his last thought, knowing himself, then perhaps that is the best she can give.

“It's been a honour, Commander,” she says.

She's not sure there's such thing as a painless death, but it's quick. A long dagger, a slide in and up, a twist, and Cullen goes quietly, a last shuddering sigh as he bleeds out.

It's mercy, and maybe it's also salvation.


End file.
